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Question What killed sega hardware

D

DotCommunist

So many particulars. So many questions.
I was reading about how a Sonic game that was never released for the saturn because of hardware issues with the dual cpu's has been finally released on a fan rebuild for PC and it got me thinking. It can't be the Saturn alone that killed segas hardware. The Dreamcast was a perfectly good machine for its day, incredibly simple to play copied games on though, iirc didn't even need hipping.

but what really killed them. Once the were nintendos big rival, now the market dominators seem to be playstation\xbox

anyone got any reccs on articles or ideas themselves. Its bugging me.
 
playstations were sold at less than cost. Sony and Sega were going to collaborate on bringing a console of that gen to market but the SEGA board vetoed.
 
It was the cumulative effect of the poorly supported Sega CD and 32X beforehand, the botched "it's out today!" launch of the Saturn, the last minute addition of 3D hardware, the higher price, and the superb launch and marketing by Sony for the PlaySation. Sega still didn't have a marketing clue for Dreamcast, also EA had an evil hand by not releasing Madden and FIFA on Dreamcast.

Megadrive, Saturn, Dreamcast....my top 3 consoles of all time right there.
 
gosub said:
playstations were sold at less than cost. Sony and Sega were going to collaborate on bringing a console of that gen to market but the SEGA board vetoed.
Click to expand...

That was Nintendo, not Sega.

Sony were going to make a CD drive for the Snes (and follow up one presumes).
 
mwgdrwg said:
It was the cumulative effect of the poorly supported Sega CD and 32X beforehand, the botched "it's out today!" launch of the Saturn, the last minute addition of 3D hardware, the higher price, and the superb launch and marketing by Sony for the PlaySation. Sega still didn't have a marketing clue for Dreamcast, also EA had an evil hand by not releasing Madden and FIFA on Dreamcast.

Megadrive, Saturn, Dreamcast....my top 3 consoles of all time right there.
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urh my memory had wiped the 32x from my mind

Sega-Genesis-Model-2-Monster-Bare.jpg


look how fucking rank that is
 
el-ahrairah said:
fun times ahead! there's nothing like playing old games on the machine itself. playing roms just doesn't have the same allure.
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I thought my sister had lost it somewhere. It's got Sonic 1 and 2, plus 3 controllers includinf the official 6 button one for Street Fighter II.

I've lost Street Fighter though :(

My Saturn is hooked up in the living room next to the PS3 ans Wii U.

14620849935_c49a0bbe61_z_d.jpg
 
apparently this 18 yo re-made Sonic is to run on a PC alas, although given its a fan project I'm sure they will get round to somehow getting it to play through a saturn
 
el-ahrairah said:
fun times ahead! there's nothing like playing old games on the machine itself. playing roms just doesn't have the same allure.
Click to expand...

I completely agree. I'll be hitting eBay soon enough, starting with Street Fighter II, then going to try and pick up a few other gems :)
 
I worked for Sega at the time. It was the hardware costs of the Dreamcast, competition from Nintendo and Sony lowered sales. They made the decision to become a publisher (some internal Dev departments survived) but there was more money in being a cross platform developer/licencer.
 
i wouldn't have trusted it. my folks got us a commodore 64 lightgun pack (based around a robocop game) and the lightgun was shit. it never worked properly, and died the first time it was used to beat up a sibling. utter crap.
 
Dreamcast was timed all wrong. It was brought out about 18 months before Playstation 2 in Japan and 6 months before it in the US. In other circumstances, that would be stealing a march. But this was too soon after Playstation 1, which had revolutionised the industry (in terms of the nature of the audience, if not actual hardware).

Dreamcast was then released with too poor a launch line up, as an extra nail in its coffin. That year between Japanese and US launches didn't help get new software on the shelves. So all in all, there was no reason not to wait to see what PlayStation 2 had to offer. People didn't perceive it as being worth moving on from their existing hardware yet.

And Sony at that time were at the height of their marketing powers, so the PS2 looked like the second coming.

I had a Dreamcast and I had a PS2. Both were great. But the Dreamcast gets overhyped by nostalgia. It had some great games alright but PS2 had some of the best games of all time. Even early in its like it had things like the revolutionary Grand Theft Auto III, Devil May Cry, Metal Gear Solid II, Ico and Gran Tourismo 3, Tony Hawks, SSX Tricky,.... I could go on and on. Later, it had Shadow of the Colossus.

Dreamcast had some great stuff but it couldn't compete with that breadth of quality. PS2 had something for everyone. People were not wrong to wait for it.

It helped that the PS2 was just the better machine. It's telling that people always compare Dreamcast to PlayStation, but that is 6th gen vs 5th gen and Playstation was 4 years old by the time Dreamcast came out. But it's hard to imagine that Dreamcast was supposed to be on a par with PlayStation 2. That was its competition.

And if you didn't want a PS2, you could always wait a bit longer for XBox.

There were all the marketing blunders too but fundamentally, Dreamcast failed because of timing, lack of quality software and inferior power. People aren't idiots. They chose the better machine.
 
kabbes said:
And Sony at that time were at the height of their marketing powers, so the PS2 looked like the second coming.
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Pretty much that, all on its own, killed them.

You're not quite right on the quality of early PS2 titles, though. It was years until the programmers learned to use the Emotion Engine properly and early PS2 games were of a markedly lower visual quality to most Dreamcast titles. It's nonsense to say that the PS2 was vastly more powerful, because it wasn't. Even by the end of its reign, no-one had ever managed to unlock all of its theoretical power because it was such a bastard to program for. The DC was a programmer's dream, by comparison. (Of course, the PS2 was more powerful - it had better be, coming 18 months later!)

Sega's early attempt at an Xbox Live-alike was a bit half-hearted, too. It was just too early to expect people to game online, over dialup.
 
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Chz said:
Pretty much that, all on its own, killed them.

You're not quite right on the quality of early PS2 titles, though. It was years until the programmers learned to use the Emotion Engine properly and early PS2 games were of a markedly lower visual quality to most Dreamcast titles. It's nonsense to say that the PS2 was vastly more powerful, because it wasn't. Even by the end of its reign, no-one had ever managed to unlock all of its theoretical power because it was such a bastard to program for. The DC was a programmer's dream, by comparison. (Of course, the PS2 was more powerful - it had better be, coming 18 months later!)

Sega's early attempt at an Xbox Live-alike was a bit half-hearted, too. It was just too early to expect people to game online, over dialup.
Click to expand...
I know exactly what you mean, but Grand Theft Auto III came out in October 2001, pretty much exactly one year after the PS2's North American and European launch. Unless you were a very early adopter (which means hardly anyone -- most people take a year or so), it felt like a launch title. I don't even like the GTA series, but I remember distinctly that seeing GTAIII was like a punch in the gut. It was like the Dreamcast was still showing Tom and Jerry cartoons and the PS2 had come along with a Hollywood epic.

It wasn't alone either. It's not just visual quality -- the depth of the games just felt so much greater on the PS2 in that mid 2001-mid 2002 period. On the Dreamcast was some JRPGs nobody in the west gave a shit about and then some fun arcade games (either ports or in style) -- Crazy Taxi, Chu Chu Rocket, Powerstone 2, Rez, Space Chanel 5. Brilliant fun games, definitely. My god, yes. But they were knockabout fun and then here came the PS2 with Devil May Cry and Metal Gear Solid 2. You can argue the toss about what you did and didn't enjoy (I hated the whole MGS series, as it happens) but you can't deny that there was a qualitative difference in what they were trying to do.
 
There wasn't a key moment on Sega slide to irrelevance, but a series of bad and/or ill-timed decisions that eroded support:

1) Struggles between Sega of Japan and Sega of America that led to the 32X (not going to blame them for the Mega CD because that's what everyone wanted in the "multimedia explosion").
2) Tacking on 3D abilities on the Saturn instead of rebuilding the console for 3D power. Bad architecture meant only their AM studios were good with it. and to be frank, their games look and feel better than a vast majority of PSOne games.
3) Not being able to keep up with Sony on the marketing department. Sega pulled console gaming out of the kids section, but Sony turned it into a legit entertainment business.
4) Lack of marquee titles on the Saturn outside arcade ports. Nights, Story of Thor II, Guardian Heroes and little more. No Sonic 4.
5) Releasing the Dreamcast way too soon, allowing Sony to bullshit their way with the "Emotion Engine" bullshots.
6) Not having EA on board. They did well without Madden and NBA Live (their 2K series were superior then), but by then, EA had turned from being the guys with the blue box to a publishing juggernaut. A lot of crap, yes, but a lot of crap that boosts catalog numbers.
7) Still too reliant on arcade games, in a time they were dying outside Japan. Some cool gimmicks (like an arcade that could read VMUs), but heh.
8) Sega of America not wanting to revive certain marquee games, such as Streets of Rage 4.
9) Put way too much money on Shenmue, which as groundbreaking as it was, needed a much bigger user base to be feasible.
10) Sonic Adventure was crap then, is crap now.
11) Bad controller. The Idea to use the VMU as a screen was neat, but that controller lacked buttons. A world of difference playing PSO for the DC and PSU for the PS2.
12) Really, Sonic Adventure is crap. When SA2 was re-released on the Gamecube a couple years later, the review average dropped almost 20 points.
13) Having online functions was neat, but came about three or four years too early. Nobody wants to be waiting in a lobby while paying for each minute.
14) Not adopting DVDs. I recall a lot of people buying PS2 early on because they could play DVDs AND games with it.
 
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